Patent holdup has proven one of the most controversial topics in innovation policy, in part because companies with a vested interest in denying its existence have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to debunk it. Notwithstanding a barrage of political and academic attacks, both the general theory of holdup and its practical application in patent law remain valid and pose significant concerns for patent policy. Patent and antitrust law have made significant strides in the past fifteen years in limiting the problem of patent holdup. But those advances are currently under threat from the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, which has reversed prior policies and broken with the Federal Trade Commission to downplay the significance of patent holdup while undermining private efforts to prevent it. Ironically, the effect of the Antitrust Division’s actions is to create a greater role for antitrust law in stopping patent holdup. We offer some suggestions for moving in the right direction.
The Role of Antitrust in Preventing Patent Holdup
- Carl Shapiro and Mark A. Lemley
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- Carl Shapiro is the Transamerica Professor of Business Strategy Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. Shapiro served as an expert witness in the FTC v. Qualcomm case discussed below. Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor at Stanford Law School and a partner at Durie Tangri LLP.